The Property Known As Garland: She's Not In Kansas Anymore

An Open Letter to Judy Garland:

Oh, Judy, Judy, Judy. You've come such a long way since you were little Frances Gumm on the vaudeville stage. Long shall you be remembered as Dorothy Gale, as Vicki Lester from A Star Is Born, as Betsy in the Andy Hardy movies, as the mother of Liza Minnelli and Lorna Luft. Your life is the stuff of showbiz legends, and as a legend you deserve much better than the petulant pity-fest you're currently receiving in The Property Known as Garland, now playing at the Actors Playhouse downtown.

The show's biggest problem is the script. One-person shows, by their very nature, are very difficult to write well. Watching a single person speaking on a stage can become very boring very quickly. Billy Van Zandt's script is a straightforward extended anecdote-filled monologue, the most standard (and least interesting) style in the genre. And despite that, it might still have been interesting if it were less like a gossipy paperback unauthorized bio. Instead of delving into the troubles that tormented your roller-coaster life and career, we get repetitive two-dimensional whining. You had issues with your mother. She was cruel and exploitative. We get it. You had issues with Louis B. Mayer. He was cruel and exploitative. We get it. You were cruelly exploited by everyone who knew you, and were robbed of your childhood and your freedom, and indeed, such torment can certainly be the stuff of engrossing drama. Van Zandt's script turns your suffering into petulance, and loses the genuine pathos of your story. You deserve a truly gripping expose of Hollywood and the early studio system, and how they treated their precious stars as cheap commodities. This script doesn't begin to do you or your story justice.

Playing you, Adrienne Barbeau is fine. Just fine. Her performance isn't a revelation, but neither is it an utter catastrophe. She has sufficient charisma to fill the stage (no small feat when performing essentially alone), but her full potential is stunted by the script. The life of Judy Garland should give any actress plenty of meat to chew on, but Ms. Barbeau simply isn't given enough to do as an actress. The script hardly makes any demands of her other than memorizing her lines. The strongest moment, in which she stands still and listens to an overture of Judy Garland standards, is a breath of pure theatre. The many conflicting emotions on her face speak more than the previous 90-minute monologue can. Were the whole play like this one moment, it could be something beautiful and poignant. Kerby Joe Grubb is adorable in his far-too-brief moments as the stage manager frantically trying to get a living legend onto the stage, and the play would be much stronger if La Barbeau played off of him throughout rather than in just four scenes.

Oh, Ms. Garland. Someday, there will be a great play written about your fascinating life and career. You deserve a poignant, gripping drama like Lanie Robertson's Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. You deserve much better than The Property Known as Garland.

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